


On the Tip of Your Tongue

by glittercracker



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, just on the plot side of pwp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 18:16:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15149015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittercracker/pseuds/glittercracker
Summary: “Give me something. Just one sappy memory.”“Make me,” Kurapika said, stretching his body like a cat, the sheet riding low on his hips, clearly teasing him.Leorio gave him a half-smile. “If you insist,” he said, and then flipped him over. Kurapika let out a startled yelp.In which a walk down memory lane turns into a whole lot more.





	On the Tip of Your Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> This slots in between in between chapters 9 and 10 of "The Deepest Secret," my fic for the HxHBB18. If you haven't read that you might have a few head-scratching moments here but basically this is set five years after the end of the 2011 anime. Leorio and Kurapika have been together for a few years. And they have a kid. Thanks to losing_sanity_fast and fireolin for beta reading. They are both wonderful writers, go read their fics!! And thanks to my new nameless discord friend for the title - it's perfect, whoever you are!

A cry rose up from the open window one floor below, its raw edges unsoftened by the jasmine-heavy night air. Leorio turned away from the window, chuckling. “Sounds like they’ve made up,” he said, brushing his fingers through Kurapika’s hair. He pushed it away from his temple, fanning the fine, pale-golden strands out on the pillowcase behind him.

 

He had bought their bedding in a parchment color rather than white because of the way it complemented Kurapika’s coloring. Of course, Leorio had never told him that, or how much he loved to look at him like this, in the gentle light of the reading lamp. He glowed against the ivory linen, the dips beneath his closed eyes and cheekbones shadowed in slate, his shoulders and arms like curves of driftwood, slender and sinewy.

 

Kurapika smiled sleepily. “Of course they did,” he said. “They’re both completely whipped.”

 

“True. But do they have to be so _loud_ about it?”

 

They paused to listen to a combustion of moans and cries – and was that something shattering? – from below.

 

“They can’t help it,” Kurapika said after a moment, reaching up with a delicate finger and tracing its tip along Leorio’s stubbled jawline. “They’ve only just realized what they are to each other. Remember what we were like when we figured it out?”

 

Leorio laughed at that. “‘When we figured it out?’”

 

“What do you mean?” Kurapika demanded, his eyes flying open. “And think carefully about how you answer that question.”

 

Leorio met Kurapika’s narrowed eyes. _Shit._ “Well, only that I seem to remember doing most of the confessing.”

 

“Mmm, and what a confession it was! Let me think, how did it start…”

 

“Pika,” Leorio warned.

 

Kurapika cleared his throat, and with exaggerated gravity he said, “Kurapika, we’ve known each other for a long time. It may have come to your attention…I mean, you might have noticed that I’ve noticed that you…which is to say that when I’m around you I’m not entirely…uh…myself… And then you started swearing…” Kurapika dissolved into laughter.

 

“Hey!” Leorio cried. “At least I said _something!_ If I’d left it up to you, we’d never have got past you checking me out whenever you thought I wasn’t looking.”

 

Kurapika’s laughter ended abruptly in another glare. “I did _not_ do that.”

 

“Oh, please,” Leorio said. “I could feel your eyes burning holes in my ass for months before I put you out of your misery.”

 

“That’s it,” Kurapika said, “couch.” He indicated the couch at the far side of the room with a commanding finger.

 

“Pika,” Leorio said, trying to gather him into his arms. Kurapika shoved him away.

 

“Kurapika, really? You’re going to kick me out of bed for telling the truth?” He grabbed again for Kurapika, and this time he caught him, pulling him close.

 

Kurapika bit his shoulder, hard enough to make him yelp and let go. The next moment, Leorio laughed. “I see. _That’s_ the kind of mood you’re in.” He grabbed him in a vice-grip, ignoring Kurapika’s swats and bites, nuzzling into his neck and then biting back. Kurapika fought him until Leorio took a velvety earlobe between his teeth and then, all at once, he relaxed, letting out a long sigh as Leorio sucked it and then worried it with his teeth.

 

“That’s better,” Leorio said, moving to the fragile skin behind Kurapika’s ear and sucking. He knew that it would leave a mark. Lust pulled and tangled in his belly at the thought, and he felt himself hardening. He stroked his hands up and down Kurapika’s sides, pressing thumbs into the hollows of his hips, brushing his fingers over the flimsy silk of his sleep shorts until Kurapika was breathing hard. Then he moved away, holding Kurapika’s shoulders to keep him back as he tried to follow.

 

“So,” Leorio said, running his thumbs along Kurapika’s collarbones, “when _did_ you figure it out?”

 

“Figure what out?”

 

Leorio grinned, kissed his neck. “That I’m completely irresistible and you couldn’t live without me?”

 

Kurapika rolled his eyes. “You’re fishing for compliments, and I refuse to pander to it.”

 

“Piiiika,” Leorio groaned into his hair, “is there not a single romantic bone in your body?”

 

“It’s doubtful,” Kurapika answered.

 

“Give me _something._ Just one sappy memory.”

 

“Make me,” Kurapika said, stretching his body like a cat, the sheet riding low on his hips, clearly teasing him.

 

Leorio gave him a half-smile. “If you insist,” he said, and then flipped him over. Kurapika let out a startled yelp, but Leorio was already running his tongue from his tailbone to the short, soft hair at the base of his neck, and Kurapika couldn’t hide his shiver of pleasure. Leorio captured his wrists in one hand and pulled them above his head. Kurapika turned his head to look up at him, eyes like a sea storm, churning with the kind of invitation that leads sailors to their deaths. He flicked a sliver of pink tongue between his lips and writhed in Leorio’s grip, one silk-covered hip brushing against Leorio’s cock.

 

“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” Kurapika said, his voice soft, but with the rough catch of a cat’s tongue.

_Dammit._ Four years together and that look, that voice, could still take Leorio to pieces. He hooked a finger under the band of Kurapika’s sleep shorts and pulled them off. His eyes mapped Kurapika’s body, painted in swathes of rich light: long and slim and golden, with a few fading marks on his thighs left by Leorio’s teeth and lips. Even those were gilded now, the bruises softened and burnished by a few days’ time.

 

Leorio leaned down and kissed the back of his neck, and then nipped it, sucked at the thin skin over his pulse points, drawing a gasp from Kurapika. His own body thrilled in response. Still holding Kurapika’s wrists fast, he licked his way down Kurapika’s backbone, tonguing each divot until he reached the cleft of his ass. Then he used his free hand to hitch him up onto his knees and spread him wide.

 

Kurapika exhaled deeply into the pillow as Leorio licked up the crevice, pausing to circle around his entrance. He teased it, dipping the tip of his tongue inside but no deeper, until Kurapika was writhing. Then he pulled back, letting go of his wrists.

 

“What are you _doing?”_ Kurapika demanded, turning over, eyes black with flashes of red, lust and anger. Leorio grinned inwardly.

 

“Until you answer my question?” Leorio said, shrugging as he pulled a wiry golden hair from his tongue and then studied it in the lamplight. It was like a crimped wire filament. Beautiful. “Nothing.”

 

“Leorio,” Kurapika said, low and menacing. Of course. He hated interrupted sex more than he hated just about anything.

 

“Kurapika,” Leorio said in response, flicking the hair away and smiling blandly at him, hoping he hadn’t mis-calculated. A night on the couch at this point would be incredibly uncomfortable, not to mention disappointing.

 

“I am _not_ feeding your ego in exchange for sex,” Kurapika said. “Believe me, it’s bordering on obese as it is.”

 

“Well then? Is that good-night?”

 

Kurapika gave him a sharp look and slipped a hand into Leorio’s boxers before Leorio could think to stop him. He ran a fingertip around the leaking slit of his cock, and then brought it to his mouth, sucking his finger without taking his eyes off Leorio’s.

_Fuck. He was doomed._

 

“But,” Kurapika said at last, “I might reconsider if you make it worth my while.”

 

“I see.” Leorio pushed Kurapika back down and took his cock into his mouth. He worked it with his tongue and lips and teeth, but when he felt Kurapika’s fingers tighten in his hair, felt him coming close to release, he pulled off.

 

“Leorio!” Kurapika snapped.

 

“Yes, my darling?” Leorio asked, expecting a demand to bring him off.

 

Instead, Kurapika looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes and said, “Hold my wrists again.”

 

“Say ‘please.’”

 

“No.”

 

“I’m going to make you plead before this is over.”

 

“You think so?”

 

“I think you’re going to beg, and when you do, then you’re going to tell me.”

 

“Tell you when I fell for you?”

 

“Tell me whatever I want to know.”

 

Kurapika studied him for a moment and then said, “Deal.”

 

Leorio pushed Kurapika’s wrists back up over his head, and then sank down on top of him, admonishing himself to stay in control. As soon as Kurapika moaned, though, he lost it, ravenous for him: his warmth and wiry muscle, his smell of soap and cologne and the subtle musk of his skin, the heat of his erection against Leorio’s belly. He debated giving up the game and just fucking him; but then Kurapika would be insufferable. And so he lifted Kurapika’s legs onto his shoulders and attacked his opening in earnest, running his tongue along the first inner ring of muscle until its spasms were pulling at him, then switching a couple of lube-slicked fingers for his tongue as he moved his mouth again to Kurapika’s cock.

 

Leorio could easily take all of Kurapika’s length when he wanted to. Now, though, he only toyed with the head, using the tip of his tongue to push into the slit, until Kurapika was panting and thrusting. At the same time, he worked his fingers inside of him. He knew exactly where to touch him, the exact amount of pressure he needed to unravel him. He also knew that he needed to stop if he was going to have any chance of making him plead. It was just so very hard with that beautiful body twisting under him, Kurapika murmuring words in a language Leorio was only beginning to understand, as he taught it to their daughter.

 

He knew the words Kurapika spoke when he was close to coming, though, and when he heard them he pulled away, let go of him.

 

“Leorio,” Kurapika moaned.

 

Leorio leaned back on the pillow behind him. “Say ‘please.’”

 

“This means that much to you?” he demanded, his eyes dark and cheeks red and dick dripping beads of pre-cum, to Leorio’s delight. “Enough to torture me for it?”

 

“Torture you?” Leorio couldn’t help laughing. “You tortured me for _years_ Kurapika. I don’t think we’d be even if you pined for me for a century.”

 

Kurapika looked at Leorio for a long moment, and then he looked away. “Well then, you would be wrong.”

 

All at once, Leorio’s laughter faded. “Excuse me?” he said.

 

“You heard me,” Kurapika answered.

 

“But I’m not sure I understood. You’re saying…you _pined_ for me? Since when?”

 

“I haven’t begged yet,” Kurapika reminded him.

 

In response, Leorio ran a slick hand along his own length and then thrust into him. Kurapika shut his eyes and let out a soft cry of pleasure. Leorio moved slowly, knowing that Kurapika wanted the opposite. He tried to speed the rhythm but Leorio held his hips steady. When Kurapika reached to stroke himself Leorio grabbed his hands, twining their fingers together and holding them fast against the pillows on either side of his head.

 

“Leorio…” Kurapika said, his voice ragged.

 

“Yes, my love? Something you want to tell me?”

 

“I hate you,” he hissed through his teeth.

 

“But you love this.” Leorio bent his head and took a nipple into his mouth, rolling it until it was hard and then letting it go. Kurapika’s breath hitched and stuttered, and he moved his hips, trying to find something, anything to rut against. But Leorio wouldn’t let him. He continued to thrust at the same slow, maddening pace, working Kurapika’s nipples to red pebbles with his tongue, switching to teeth when Kurapika began to whimper.

 

It was getting harder and harder for Leorio to hold himself back; his balls were tight, his guts burning. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he could actually outlast him, Kurapika let out a strangled cry. “Okay, fine, please! _Please_ let me come!”  

 

“Since you asked so nicely,” Leorio said, and then drove into him hard and fast. He freed one of his hands and wrapped it around Kurapika’s cock. It only took three strokes before he came with a cry he muffled in the pillow, spilling over Leorio’s hand and his own belly. Leorio buried his face in Kurapika’s hair and thrust until he came too, more powerfully than he had in a long time, wave after wave of bliss shuddering through him, sharp and sweet.

 

When the last thrums of pleasure finally faded and he began to soften, Leorio rolled over and out of Kurapika, but he lay curled around him, gazing at him. There were few things as beautiful as Kurapika in his afterglow, all soft eyes and flushed cheeks and bee-stung lips, and nothing Leorio would rather look at as he drifted down from the high of his own orgasm.

 

“You’re being remarkably patient,” Kurapika said after a few minutes had passed.

 

“I’m feeling remarkably good.” He leaned toward Kurapika to kiss him, but Kurapika stopped him with a firm hand.

 

“I don’t think so, given where that mouth has been! Plus I’m sticky - ”

 

“And you hate being sticky. I know. I’ll be right back.”

 

Leorio got up and went into the bathroom, cleaned himself up and brushed his teeth. Then he grabbed a couple of towels and a warm washcloth. He came back to the bed, cleaned Kurapika and dried him and lay another towel on the wet patch of sheet. Then he climbed back into bed and brushed Kurapika’s hair back from his face. With the flush of climax fading he looked tired, and a bit paler than Leorio would have liked.

 

“You okay, Pika?”

 

“Of course I’m okay.”

 

“That wasn’t too much?”

 

“You’re going to ask me that after teasing me for the better part of an hour?”

 

“You could have just told me what I wanted to know.”

 

“What, and miss a fairly spectacular session of edging?” His voice was deadpan but there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.

 

Leorio groaned. “You completely played me, didn’t you?”

 

Kurapika twitched a shoulder toward his ear, laughing. “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”

 

Leorio let out a growl of exasperation. “Okay, fine. But for that, you have to answer two questions.”

 

Kurapika sighed. “Number one?”

 

“When did you know? That you wanted to be with me?”

 

Kurapika gave him a long, thoughtful look, and finally he answered, “On the boat.”

 

Leorio didn’t want to show his dejection at this obvious answer. It could have been worse. “I guess that makes sense. You spent a _lot_ of time in my infirmary.”

 

But Kurapika shook his head. “Not that boat. The first one. The one that took us to the Hunter Exam.”

 

Leorio stared at him incredulously. “You mean – at the very beginning? When we first met?”

 

“Don’t let it go to your head. It wasn’t love at first sight.”

 

“So what – I just grew on you?”

 

“No. You helped me save Gon when he jumped overboard.”

 

“But that was – I mean, it was just what anyone would do.”

 

“And yet no one else did. We could all have fallen in, and do you think that captain would have come back for us if we had?” He traced a finger down Leorio’s shoulder, and Leorio shivered, felt the faint beginnings of arousal again. “But it wasn’t just that you grabbed for Gon. The look on your face…you would have jumped into the ocean with him just so that he wouldn’t die alone.”

 

Leorio flushed. “I…might have?”

 

“You also helped me no questions asked, even though I’d been shitty to you before that. And that’s when I knew that all the bluster and bravado was hiding a big, sloppy heart.”

 

Leorio blinked at Kurapika in wonder. “So you really _did_ pine for me.”

 

“Is that your second question?”

 

“Oh! No. Never mind.”

 

“So what is it? The second one?”

 

“Can I ask you something else, first?”

 

“I guess.” Kurapika played with one of Leorio’s nipples, teasing it to a point and then sucking it.

 

“That’s not going to distract me,” Leorio said, trying desperately to ignore the blaze of heat running straight from Kurapika’s mouth to his groin.

 

“Of course it’s not,” Kurapika smirked.

 

“Okay then: why the hell didn’t you say anything about it? I mean, that you liked me?”

 

Kurapika contemplated Leorio for a moment with sleepy eyes, and then he said, “First of all, I didn’t think you’d be interested. You were always talking about women.”

 

“Ah…okay, you have a point there. But I was young and stupid and besides, I didn’t think _you’d_ be interested. In anyone. Ever.”

 

Kurapika closed his eyes, nestling close to Leorio, though his fingers didn’t stop moving on his chest, tracing shivery patterns. “I couldn’t afford to be,” he said drowsily. “I couldn’t lose focus. The eyes…”

 

Leorio sighed. “Yeah. The eyes.”

 

Kurapika’s mouth lapsed into a troubled line. Leorio wondered if there would ever be a day when that didn’t happen; when he could remember his family without the sadness. He tucked Kurapika’s head under his chin and pulled him closer, mustering courage for the last question, the one he’d been too afraid to ask since the moment he thought of it. It was all tied together, really: Kurapika’s lingering sadness and Leorio’s fear. What if it the thought of another family was too much for Kurapika? What if he refused, or worse, left him? And so Leorio had kept his mouth shut, preferring what they had to what they might lose.

 

But this past night had convinced him that the words needed to be spoken. It wasn’t just because of what was on the line for Gon and Killua; the fierce conviction with which Kurapika had defied his limitations to help their old friends had both inspired and chilled Leorio. It had reminded him of the look on Kurapika’s pinched, pale face when he’d finally decided, deep in the belly of the expedition ship, full of tubes and needles, that he intended to live. It was time for Leorio to speak, or, well, forever hold his peace.

 

Except that when he pushed back to meet Kurapika’s eyes, the words on the tip of his tongue, he realized that Kurapika had fallen asleep. He had to laugh. Leorio kissed his forehead, turned off the bedside lamp and then snuggled into him. The night was finally silent, except for the hum of insects and the wash of waves on the shore below. The low moon cast the room in soft light, silvering the curve of Kurapika’s shoulder and cheekbone. This really would have been the perfect moment…

_Oh, what the hell?_ Leorio thought. _Might as well give it a practice run._

 

“Kurapika,” he said, barely above a whisper, “I love you and Liana more than anything in this world, and I want us to be together forever as a family. Will you marry me?”

 

There. That hadn’t been so hard. In a day or two he’d pick out a ring and pack a beach picnic and –

 

Kurapika’s fingers laced through his. “I thought you were never going to ask.”

 

“You were listening?” Leorio cried.

 

“Apparently.”

 

“Well, do I get an answer?”

 

“That’s six questions, Leorio. Our contract specified two. I already made special dispensation for a third. I think I’ve been more than generous.”

 

“Kurapika,” he groaned.

 

“Your meter resets at dawn. You’ll get your answer then. _If_ you say ‘please.’”

 

But the way that Kurapika kissed him left absolutely no doubt as to what the answer would be.


End file.
